hanging upside down from the rafters

Random Editor

In breaking news, my car (known as Scorpius – if you don’t get that reference, watch Farscape immediately – I can lend you the DVDs) is in the garage again. I’ve given up asking what’s wrong with it, I just hand my credit card over, stick my fingers in my ears and go ‘lalalalala’ while they tell me how much the repair will cost.

Despite that, I made it to the CPW Monday seminar this evening – the lovely Alison Hennessey from Vintage – Random House’s literary fiction imprint – came to tell us what being an editor is all about. [yes, I know she spells her name strangely, but she’s from London, what can I say?]

In a fast-paced and fascinating session Alison took us through the acquisitions process, what editing a book for publication involves, and a typical day in the life of an editor at a big publishing house. I took pages and pages of notes, so I won’t repeat them all for you here. There were some interesting points though:

It really is worth getting an agent – they know exactly which editors to pitch your novel to and exactly when to do it.

Editors tend to look for qualities over and above good writing – if you have a ‘platform’, will work well with an editor, are ‘marketable’, and have ideas for further novels, you are more likely to have your work picked up.

If you’ve been in a writers’ group, this indicates you’re used to accepting criticism and will therefore work well with an editor.

Short stories are selling better now – because of e-readers.

Good writing and good ideas are both important, but ideas can be brushed up whereas if an author can’t write there’s no fixing it.

People in publishing are expected to do all their reading outside office hours… yes… I could do that job…

At least nobody asked her when one could start sending abusive emails to a publisher after submitting a manuscript for consideration. Yes. Someone really did ask that last time.